Xandros Desktop OS 3 Deluxe Edition

Review: The latest version of Xandros ships with some terrific features, including VPN support, a firewall wizard, DVD burning, and encrypted home folders. The new features add up to a great distro.

The Sum of the Parts
We frequently get the same question from our readers in the ExtremeTech forum: I want to get rid of Windows, so which Linux distribution should I try? Now we have a definite answer: Get Xandros. With the release of version 3, the Xandros folks have finally come up with a full-blown replacement for Windows on the desktop. New stuff in this release includes a VPN wizard, a firewall wizard, encrypted home folders, DVD burning, and a number of other goodies.
Thats a lot of new features, and some of them answer criticisms weve had of a variety of Linux distros. Can a desktop distro really be a viable replacement for Windows? To find out, we installed it on a couple of PCs--a desktop and a laptop.

Before we move on to Xandros, here are the specs for our two test systems:

Jim manages the PC Magazine and ExtremeTech forums, and is responsible for building community in the forums on both sites. He started managing PC Mag's forum on ZiffNet on CompuServe many years ago. He then transferred the staff and expertise to the Web. He left ZDNet when it moved to San Francisco and came back to Ziff after the split from ZDNet, right before ExtremeTech launched. You can get more background at his personal site: www.jimlynch.com/profile.htm.

His favorite movies include Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Three Musketeers (1973 version), Dune (Sci Fi Channel version), and gobs of others. He can't live without his iPAQ Pocket PC,he uses it at the gym and everywhere else,and his DVD collection features more than 200 films. His favorite game is Tribes (PC), which is more than three years old but he still plays it all the time.

Jim likes interacting with the folks in the forum and the content. 'I Love both of 'em,' says Lynch. 'It's what makes the job fun and interesting.'